The present subject matter relates generally to music notation for piano music. Specifically, the subject matter relates to music notation including finger numbering to simplify a student's understanding of hand positions for a musical piece.
Learning to play the piano is challenging, particularly during the first few years. Beginners particularly have trouble reading traditional piano music. Typically students learn from sheet music of classic songs, exercise songs created by publishing companies, or other materials that are not particularly student friendly.
In a traditional setting, beginner piano students learn to identify both notes and intervals on the treble and bass clefs and develop a basic understanding of the scales and chords, including key signatures and the differences between sharps and flats. Students learn to understand the pattern of the clefs in order to read the notes on the staves as well as rhythm symbols such as whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth and triplet notation and song structure notation such as D.S. al Fine, D.C. al Fine, repeat signs, and coda notation. With respect to piano music specifically, students learn to recognize hand position changes such as stretching and crossovers. Sight reading, or even just competent reading, may take years of studying various types of songs to develop.
Accordingly, there is a need for piano musical notation that simplifies the student's understanding of the hand positioning as he learns to play the piano.